This invention relates to a rotary flat section having flat clothings opposed to a cylinder in a carding machine to accomplish a carding action, and more particularly to means for preventing air as well as undesirable material, such as, short fiber, dirt and the like from blowing-off out of the flat section through clearances present between adjacent flat bars composing the flat section.
Heretofore, for this purpose of preventing the air blowing-off, various arrangements have been proposed. For example, Japanese Patent Publication No. 40-26214 discloses a method of cleaning a flat in a carding machine, wherein the rotary flat is contained in a chamber provided with various air blast and suction nozzles to provide a stream of air in the chamber, causing the undesirable material blown off in the chamber to be discharged through the suction nozzles together with the air stream. As will be understood, however, an apparatus for bringing this method into operation necessarily requires a large-sized cover to form the chamber, the various nozzles to circulate air through the chamber, a blower to supply air through the blast nozzles, a filter means to filter air, which includes the undesirable material, passed through the suction nozzles, etc. This results in the disadvantage that the apparatus becomes of great size and is costly to manufacture.
Another known device is shown in Japanese laid-open Utility Model Specification No. 48-38117, which discloses an air blow-off preventing device of a relatively simple construction comprising a closing plate connected to each flat bar to extend over a clearance between the adjacent flat bars. The closing plate is provided with an elastic plate on its one side which is opposed to the cylinder of the carding machine. With this prior art arrangement, the construction thereof is relatively simple. However, since the longitudinal center axis of the flat bar does not coincide with that of the associated clearance, a considerable width of a closing plate is required to fully cover the clearance. Such a widened closing plate and accordingly an elastic plate has to be subject to deformation whenever one flat bar makes an angle relative to other flat bars, resulting in a short life of the closing and elastic plates. It is very difficult or troublesome to fixedly secure the closing plate to the flat bar. This is because the closing plate usually has to be secured to a back portion of the cast iron flat bar. In addition, depending on the configuration of the flat bar, there the disadvantageous situation that the closing plate can not be positioned to close the overall longitudinal length of the clearance between the adjacent flat bars. When grinding flat needles or replacing a flat clothing, the closing plate has to be removed from the associated flat bar, since it is fixed to the flat bar.
It is accordingly an object of this invention to eliminate the above disadvantages of the prior art arrangements and to provide means for preventing air from blowing-off through each clearance present between adjacent flat bars composing a rotary flat section, which means employs closing plates of a minimum width to cover the associated clearances to provide a complete prevention of the air blowing-off.
It is another object of this invention to provide a rotary flat, which is simple in construction and easy in manufacture and assembly.